Posts Tagged ‘Pearl’

Seventy-four years later, the navy is using DNA testing in hopes of at last returning the men’s remains to their families.

The bones of the unidentified crew members have been exhumed from a military cemetery in Hawaii and transported to a laboratory in Nebraska.

Seven men have been identified thus far, with 381 members of the Oklahoma’s crew remaining unidentified.

“We need to get these guys home,” Carrie Brown, the anthropologist in charge of the identification initiative told the Washington Post. “They’ve been not home for too long.”

Ms Brown said that while some people may wonder “who’s even alive” to remember the sinking of the Oklahoma, for some people it remains a seminal moment “in their family history”.

One family from Wisconsin lost three brothers on board the Oklahoma.

Franklin Roosevelt, then-US president, declared December 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy”.

More than seven decades later, Pearl Harbor Day commemorations took place across the US on Monday to honour the 2,403 Americans killed in the surprise attack that prompted US entry into the Second World War.

Of those killed, 1,177 were on board the USS Arizona, which exploded during the attack. They remain trapped inside to this day.